Some quick research on bananas and imperialism 

This website is still under development, and it will be a while until I sort out all the sources and there are still many more sources to add. One thing is obvious that controlling world trade ammounts to imperialism, and one method of controlling world trade is to inhibit trade between under developed countries. It is not just political divide and conquer and encouraging ethnic conflicts, the imperialists have cleverly set up a system where countries, espicially in Africa, will receive limited benefit from trading with each other. For the moment I will use bananas to make my point


Student Economic Review, Vol. 20, 2006, pg. 201 “INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TRADE POLICY: IT’S IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPINGWORLD” by SINEAD KELLEHER Senior Sophister
 
You can click on the above an order to read the article. On electronic page 3 the author describes a common theme“fatal reliance on a single export crop” which can be very dangerous to many countries

"For this reason, falling prices or demand have devastating consequences for entire economies. This is particularly pronounced when countries focus their productive resources on only one or two goods. This is very common practice in the Developing World and a prime example of a country’s “fatal reliance on a single export crop” (New Internationalist, October 1999) is the Dominican Republic. During the 1980s, bananas made up 20% of GDP, 60% of exports and provided jobs for 10,000 people. However, following a number of hurricanes and a more liberalized market in the EU, the exports of bananas fell dramatically, from 72,000 tons in 1988 to just 28,000 tons in 1998 (New Internationalist, 1999)"

The underline is quoted from the article. Obviously putting all of your eggs in one basket will only lead to trouble. The following is from Walden Bello who is a member of the Philippine’s house of representatives and an academic. Although this article has nothing to do with bananas it does explain the situation, and what I mean when I said it discourages nations from trading with each other. If they produce the same thing and if they produce so much of it that the price drops, they sure as hell have a hard time trading with each other

“Manufacturing a Food Crisis” By Walden Bello * The Nation
June 2, 2008

          http://www.countercurrents.org/bello170508.htm 

"The support that African governments were allowed to muster was channeled by the World Bank toward export agriculture to generate foreign exchange, which states needed to service debt. But, as in Ethiopia during the 1980s famine, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into less suitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the World Bank’s encouragement of several economies to focus on the same export crops often led to overproduction, triggering price collapses in international markets"

Many African banana growers felt they would be ruined if South American countries (who can produce bananas cheaper than in Africa)  were given equal terms in the banana trade. However the problem in the first place was that many Africans were encouraged to produce bananas when they could have produced something else more efficiently. As this shows there is a sort of tension developing because of this . I will add more later

"High duties keep food imports from poor countries out of Europe"

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5127705,00.html

 "The agreement made banana imports from Africa cheap, while Latin American producers had to pay higher duties and felt disadvantaged. The ACP agreement did not include former Spanish colonies, which prompted Ecuador and Costa Rica to sue the European Union. They won the case in 2009. The EU now has seven years to lower import tariffs on bananas from 174 euros per ton to 114 euro.




"That is not  fair," said agriculture expert Francisco Mari.




"Banana production is more difficult and expensive in Africa than in Latin American countries. Production is cheaper because huge agro-multis (agricultural multinational corporations) are very active there."




He adds that many African farmers now fear that African bananas will be pushed out of the European market."